This sporting life.......

It’s been a funny old week in sport.

 

First we have the pantomime over Moeen Ali and his ‘Gaza’ adornments. The ECB said it’s OK with them. The ICB says it’s against the dress rules, which it clearly is, totally failing to understand that Islam makes its own rules, #1 of which is ‘the laws, rules and regulations of the kafirs do not apply to you, wherever you may live’.

 

Then we have Muslim politicians in Malaysia jumping up and down in fury because the Commonwealth Games parade featured Scottie dogs, one of which led each team. What made matters worse was that the wee chap assigned to the Malaysian team refused to walk.  A perceptive animal, that one. They say that it is an insult to Muslims who regard the dog a unclean. I have news for you guys. The legitimate inhabitants of the Christian-Democratic West believe that pooch is man’s best friend, not that you bigots would know anything about ‘best friends’.

 

And get your hadith right. It very sensibly says that pot and pans and plates that have been licked by a dog must be washed clean. Very sensible, an essential part of hygiene, not religion, especially in a hot country. We all do the same. A dog’s saliva can carry all sorts of nasties, including rabies – also endemic in hot countries.

 

And here’s some advice for you to take, ins’hallah.

 

When you are in Rome, or Glasgow for that matter, you do as the Romans or Glaswegians do. We in the West are utterly sick and tired of foreigners lecturing us about their primitive beliefs and superstitions and how you are going to wage endless war upon us until we are all followers of the Prophet. Meanwhile you would do well to try to dispel the West’s image of Islam, which is the Twin Towers and 7/7. And those who are not prepared to conform and to obey our laws might be happier in, say, Malaysia.

 

And a piece of advice for Moeen.

 

You are no Graeme Swann. If you persevere, you may improve provided that you remember that you are out on that field to play cricket, not to make political statements. We English do not wear our hearts – or our religion – on our sleeves,  and you are, after all, playing for England. Your religion is your affair; your ‘in your face’ attitude’ wins no friends.

 

 

 

Israel, Hamas, and war crimes.......

 

One Navi Pillai, who describes herself a ‘UN Human Rights Commissioner, tells us that in the latest round of the everlasting war between Israel war crimes have been committed.

· 
Well, she is certainly right about that. But when she says that it is Israel that is the criminal she departs into the realms of unreality.

·    
War crimes are a complex branch of law but are generally regarded as including the following:

1.   murdering, mistreating, or deporting civilian residents of an occupied territory to slave labor camps

2.   murdering or mistreating prisoners of war or civilian internees

3.   forcing protected persons to serve in the forces of a hostile power

4.   killing hostages

5.   killing or punishing spies or other persons convicted of war crimes without a fair trial

6.   wantonly destroying cities, towns, villages, or any object not warranted by military necessity.

 

One might add

 

'anything done by Israel to defend itself'

and

'Anything an over-paid nobody in the UN says is a war crime'.

 

Had she accused Hamas, she would have been on rock solid ground.

 

Hamas has unleashed rockets at Israel by the thousand, more than 6600 in the last few weeks alone, plus countless mortar attacks. Not only is there no ‘military necessity’, there is no intention to attack military targets. The rockets are fired at random, the sole objective being to spread terror, death and destruction against Israeli civilian settlements.

 

Human Rights Watch has accused Hamas of siting rocket bases in schools, hospitals and other ‘soft’ targets to deliberately encourage the Israelis to inflict headline-catching casualties invaluable for propaganda purposes. Its use of human shields is well- known and long-established. It promotes child-soldiers and suicide bombers. It commits human rights abuses against its own people, including arbitrary arrests, detention and torture. There have been beatings with metal clubs and rubber truncheons and summary executions of suspected ‘collaborators’, including the public hangings of six Gaza citizens after which their corpses were dragged through town tied behind motor-cycles.

 

It deliberately targets civilians with IEDs and car-bombs. One of the  worst was the ‘Passover Massacre’ which killed 30 civilians and wounded 140.

 

The latest round of violence was preceded by the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers.

 

The crime-sheet seems endless and covers pretty well all of the above list.

 

So, Ms Pillai, what are you going to do about it?

M&S and TESCO: fallen icons......

Simultaneously, two of our oldest High Street icons, TESCO and M&S, are in deep poo, and their grotesquely overpaid executives don’t seem to know why. The answer is in a single word.

 

Hubris!

 

At onetime the TESCO policy was ‘stack it high and sell it cheap’. It focused on a mass market and to achieve targets it adopted a very aggressive programme of expansion. Its ruthless methods gained it a ‘bully boy’ reputation that it has never shaken off. It ram-raided through planning procedures and local opposition. Its solution to resistance was to squash it. As it moved into small country towns, it closed the High Street shops in quick succession. In Great Dunmow, a generally unspoilt little town, the ‘To let’ signs began to appear almost immediately. In most places the arrival of TESCO meant ‘Goodbye’ to the  family butcher, the corner shop, the fishmonger, the wine shop. They created town-centre deserts. But they came a cropper in another small Essex town when the entire community mobilised against them, showing that they were not invulnerable to organised resistance from ordinary people.

 

They wanted to be another Walmart so they massively expanded their product range. And they got the merchandising wrong. The average store contains about 40,000 different items because they decided to be all things to all customers -  clothing to computers. But the pricing of their groceries is about 4% above Aldi and Lidl, aggressive newcomers who know their market and stock only about 1500 to 2000 items.

 

They courted bad publicity with reports of buying from Asian sweat shops and issuing a writ for defamation against a Thai politician for daring to suggest that the relentless expansion of TESCO-LOTUS throughout the country was hurting the small shopkeepers. This offence carries a prison term; the case was dismissed, but not before highlighting TESCO’s paranoia about any opposition or criticism,  however small.

 

But there was a pleasurable moment of schadenfreude on the Isle of Man. TESCO announced that henceforth it would stop buying Manx beef because, according to them, the quality was not up to standard. As it is mostly premium grade there was a suspicion that the local farmers were unimpressed by TESCO’s ideas on  prices. Almost at the same time the ‘horse meat in TESCO burgers’ scandal broke. Manx beef was immediately reinstated.

 

The stores themselves are often tatty, dismal and out-dated. (In Thailand they are retail palaces).

 

The plain truth is that although shoppers might have a certain affection for M&S they have none for TESCO. Generally they dislike it intensely. 

 

M&S likewise lost sight of its core market. There was a time when a mum could go to M&S and clothe the whole family. Merchandise was all ‘ Made in England’ good quality. The stock was laid out on waist-high counters. Its management method and training were widely copied as the epitome of excellence.

 

But a touch of arrogance was there. 

 

For many years it would only accept its own credit cards (but would not accept them in its overseas stores, as I discovered in Singapore). Complaints about changes in display that were inconvenient to customers, like carousels that had the lowest-displayed goods sweeping the floor, would be shrugged off  with ‘ Company policy’. They supplied goods that they wanted to sell, which is not quite the same as goods that the customer wants to buy.

 

Then it seemed as if they lost confidence  in their own uniqueness and started to compete with the likes of BHS. They appear uninterested in catering for the entire family. Women’s fashions are aimed at the under-25s.  The days when mother would buy dresses, shirts, socks and underwear for the kids, clothes for herself and husband would buy two suits, shirts, socks and underpants, all in one outing, seem to be gone. Men’s socks are only sold in the ankle-lengths favoured by the young. The almost indestructible cotton twill shirts are no longer stocked. They no longer buy shirts from Mr Susskin’s little factory in Essex.  The merchandise will come from Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh – anywhere but Britain. The last clothing I bought in M&S turned out to be tat.

 

If these firms wish to recapture their former glory they must return to their roots.

 

And pay attention to the old saw that ‘the customer is always right’.

Russian sanctions? Yeah. Right.

The EU Foreign Ministers are proposing economic sanctions against Russia. So that’s alright, then. That should quickly bring Putin to heel.

 

The EU has no problem in agreeing to this. They are not going to do anything about energy imports, or Russian industry, or banning imports or exports or arms or anything that might harm Germany or France or Italy.

 

The sanctions will only affect financial transactions, almost all of which go through the City, and oligarchs including those who live in London. To all intents and purposes, the UK is doing all the heavy lifting. Nice one, Dave.

 

The wretched Russkies will just have to take their business elsewhere. Already the dosh is pouring out of London to Singapore and other eager recipients. ‘Money talks; I’ll tell you why. I heard it once. It said ‘Goodbye’! The proposals are ‘tabled for discussion’, perhaps to give Putin time to make alternative arrangements. One is to restrict the export of ‘technology knowledge’, the sort of stuff needed for fracking etc. That should be a much-needed stimulus for Russia to develop its own. That business will be lost and gone forever; the EU’s loss and Russia’s gain.

 

Do these Brussels suits imagine for one moment that this  pantomime will have any effect other than to strengthen Putin’s macho image and   support? Do they really think that the Russian people, accustomed throughout history to the most unimaginable  sufferings, are going to capitulate just because their banks might have to go elsewhere to raise capital or to sell their bonds (bond auctions in Europe will not be affected in any case)?

 

Sanctions just don’t work. They failed in Rhodesia. They failed in South Africa. (A major effect is to encourage self-sufficiency). Rhodesia failed when John Vorster stabbed it in the back by cutting off ammunition supplies. South Africa changed because it had become ungovernable. Sanctions had nothing to do with it any more than the Moscow Olympics boycott forced Russia to quit Afghanistan.

 

The solution to the Ukraine impasse is not difficult to define. This whole mess was triggered when Brussels decided to cuddle up to a country that was corrupt on a gargantuan scale and possessed not a single qualification for EU membership. The EU could now give Russia a copper-bottomed guarantee that membership of both the EU and NATO is off-limits to the Ukraine on condition that Russia stops playing games on the eastern frontier.

 

What’s not to like?

Scotland: the ins and outsof 'In or Out?'

If the polls are anything to go by, the ‘Yes’ campaign is going to get a hammering in the Scottish referendum. And yet Wee Eck has run a far better and worthier campaign. This vote is about nationalism; Salmond has appealed to Scot’s history, culture, achievements on the world stage. The ‘No’ campaign has been colourless without any passion as befits the leader, the charisma-lite Alistair Darling. His approach has been the slightly-demeaning emphasis on money – how many more bawbees people will have in their pockets if they stay in the family.

 

According to him, the figure is £1400. Salmond says it will be £1000 by leaving. Both figures are probably spurious, but it does not take much for the Yes supporters to present  Darling’s as 30 pieces of silver. In the run-up to the vote, Salmond would be well advised to stay away from finance and economics and appeal to Scottish pride and sense of national identity. When he gets into the cash-nexus the wheels fall off his entire bandwagon.

 

He makes much of ‘Scottish oil’, one of the main drivers of nationalism in the first place. But his whole approach here is fatally flawed. It is based on optimistic forecasts of future oil prices, a triumph of hope over reality. The market is notoriously volatile, but in the absence of complete melt-down in the Gulf the best guess is that the onset of fracking on a world-wide scale plus the discoveries of vast new reserves of carbon energy in Africa and elsewhere suggests stable or falling prices.

 

And, of course, it is a wasting asset that is difficult and expensive to exploit. The day will come when there’s not a drop in Scottish waters, and then Scotland would be faced with the multi-billion cost of the decommissioning and clean-up.

 

Meanwhile the Nats would have us believe that Scotland would reap £7.3 billion in tax revenues in the first year of independence. But they fell to £6.5 billion last year on a downwards curve; the OBR reckons that they will fall to £3.4 in the first year of independence.

 

There is little export replacement opportunity. Oil accounts for more than 50% of the value of Scottish exports. Whisky has about 10% share, most of the remainder being banking and services.

 

It would lose much of the service sector. The large banks would have no option but to relocate to London, since EU regulations require a bank’s HQ to be where its business is concentrated. The value of Scottish exports even now is far below Britain’s as a whole, as is productivity.

 

There are related social and demographic problems which will have a major impact on the economy. The population is aging, and the workforce declining whereas in the rest of the UK it is growing. Life expectancy for males in Glasgow is just 69, about the same as North Korea and Ukraine. It is inevitable that demands on the public purse for health care and pensions will increase considerably and could well become unaffordable at the present levels of provision.

 

Then there are ‘institutional’ problems. Scotland would have to apply for EU membership, which is far from a ‘given’ as Spain has already made it clear that it will not endorse  what would give credence to the separist campaign in Catalonia. There are other European nations that would not feel this to be a comfortable precedent; Belgium springs to mind.  A unanimous vote would be required.

 

It has already been made clear that Scotland would not be allowed to use the £ Sterling, and it could not adopt the Euro without EU membership. Neither would it have access to the Bank pf England: it would have to establish its own reserve bank. Then there’s a whole raft of problems about defence, diplomatic representation, membership of NATO, and many others that would have to be sorted out before an independent Scotland was truly up-and-running.

 

But these are all negatives, implying how much the Scots owe England., when the line should be that since 1707 Scots have exercised a power over the governance of Great Britain out of all proportion to their population – eight Prime Ministers in modern times -  and have been an integral and invaluable part of a stable, tolerant, wealthy, powerful and successful major power. Darling is in danger of being told ‘Awa an’ bile your heid!’ with his constant emphasis on money and how much the English taxpayer subsidises the Scots.

 

And if Scotland does depart, it should be to the sound of the pipes, not the cash register.

Lord who?

When Dave was doing his soft-shoe reshuffle it was assumed by the pundits that perhaps one of rejects would be shunted off to the European Commission, or at least he would appoint a big-hitter at this  crucial time, when he has to start getting his act together for the Referendum; someone who would put a bit of stick about in Brussels, maybe a Eurosceptic bruiser who, as an added bonus, would make Juncker’s life a misery.

 

Experienced old-timers such as Malcolm Rifkind were trailed, along with Michael Howard and Andrew Lansley plus the usual bag of political has-beens.

 

So we have Lord Hill.

 

Lord who?

 

What do we know about him. Nothing because there is nothing to know. He is not even a nonentity.  Even Wiki struggles to make more than a couple of paragraphs. His CV is a tribute to brevity.

 

Digging around (in a very shallow hole) it can be revealed that his previous is a mixture of PR and Tory Central Office. He was Michael Gove’s understrapper before becoming Leader of the Lords.

 

That’s it.

 

Four years ago he was given a peerage. What exceptional service he rendered to the nation to have deserved such high elevation is unbeknownst.

 

If this appointment is Dave’s subtle way of showing his disdain for Brussels, that would be possibly forgivable, After all, Brown did the same in the person of Lady Ashton. The much simpler reason is that he wished to avoid a potentially embarrassing by-election, one which amongst other worries would have given another platform for UKIP when a General Election would be appearing over the horizon.

 

It sets the whole tone of the reshuffle. Has it improved the effectiveness and efficiency of British governance? It was all about image at a time when Britain’s real need is the smack of firm government

 

Michael Gove, the best modern Education Minister, was removed because he was beastly to the NUT. Had he not been so, that would have been a proper reason to get rid of him. The excellent Dominic Grieve took an early bath for putting justice above the party line. Hague just got tired of politics, True, Ken Clarke was well-past his ‘use by’ date, but the changes generally are to fit Dave’s ‘Mr Nicey’ image that he will now cultivate up to the election.

 

Promoting a  gaggle of women was aimed at the ‘image’ factor. We once had Blair’s babes. Now we have Cameron’s crumpet.

 

 

 

 

Muslim mayhem: what's our policy?

 

Exactly what are the West’s policies towards the MENA countries? Are there any? ‘Policies’ suggests a considered and consistent approach, not something made on the hoof.

 

Foreign policy for the region has always been a mess of contradictions.

 

Gaddafi was the villain if the piece until we see him  shaking hands with Tony Blair, but we backed the rebels when he finally got into trouble. Saddam was supported by the US in his war against Iran that cost maybe 1.5 million lives When Israel bombed his nuclear facility in 1981, it was roundly criticised  by the US  and condemned by the UN unanimously. When he killed maybe 100,000 Kurds with chemical weapons etc the world reaction was –shall we say – muted. And the French profited mightily from arms sales of sophisticated weapons, jet fighter planes, helicopters, state-of-the-art artillery, not to mention the nuclear reactors taken out by Israel and chemicals that could be developed into WMD.

 

Saddam may have been a bastard but in those days he was our bastard.

 

Successive Egyptian dictators were supported by the West; now we don’t know which way to turn.

 

Years previously,  the C IA and the UK  overthrew the only democratically elected government in  Iran and installed the Shah as dictator

 

The ‘Arab Spring’ was seen by many as the birth of democracy in countries where it had never previously existed. Fat chance! Democracy took 1000 years to develop in the West. It was only fully established in sophisticated Europe in the second half of the20th Century. Instead we have shambles in Libya which is being fought over by a variety of militia, reversion to military dictatorship in Egypt, permanent instability in Lebanon, civil war in Syria and Iraq, Al Qaeda in Yemen.  It is never-ending

 

We tend to think of Islamic jihad as  relatively recent threat. It is not. Assad Snr was fighting it over 30 years ago, and destroyed it at a cost of 40,000 dead. With Assad Jnr it is a case of history repeating itself. It is reckoned that there are approximately 1500 separate terrorist groups  in Syria right now, fighting over their own slice of territory.

 

Now we have a bunch of lunatics dubbed ISIS – more lately, the Caliphate. So what should the West do about it? Nothing. ISIS  is an existential threat to all the neighbouring states. It has made too many enemies. It will be obliterated by them without any intervention by the West for the simple reason that it is a sheer matter of survival

If Assad goes, what then? It is a reasonable certainty that, unlike  Assad, his successor is likely to be a major threat to the West.

 

And the situation in Palestine is normal, but there are no terrorists there. Only Freedom Fighters, according to the BBC and the Guardian.

 

It can be only a matter of time before Saudi Arabia implodes, the difference being that the people will be seeking the direct opposite of Islamic fundamentalism; they have had their fill of that. As ever, the West will be caught on the wrong side with its trousers around its ankles. Hopefully this will put an end to Saudi paying danegeld to terrorist groups around  the world.

 

So who’s side should we be on? The simple answer is ‘nobody’s’.

 

In the past 30 years Muslims have been killing each other in ever-increasing numbers. There is no possibility of imposing a solution from outside, and a likely scenario is that the various factions will simply continue to fight each other to a standstill, ceasing only from total exhaustion.

 

The West must remember that it does not have a dog in this fight. The essential foreign policy question should be ‘ What vital Western interests are at risk?’, remembering always the wise Gladstonian principle of  ‘No unnecessary foreign entanglements.

 

Current policy should be ‘masterly inactivity’. Surely Dave can manage that?

O's woes.............

O's foibles are beginning to accumulate to the point where even steadfast democrats are abandoning ship. Political talk has sharply turned to his successor. If he has his way, it would not be Hillary as the now famous Clinton-Obama feud makes the Hatfield and McCoy bust up look like a girl scout picnic.

 

 

For her part, Hillary is doing everything in her power to alienate the public. In a recent effort to associate with the hoi palloi, she droned on about how poor she and Bill were after he finished his second term as President. That ploy of hers has since come back to bite here in the bum. Her new book, Hard Choices, has been a total flop as her incredibility rating continues to soar.

 

Meantime, O is busy laughing off efforts to bring him back down to earth. He is being sued by the Speaker of the House, he is under several threats of impeachment, his health care program is in the toilette, his foreign policy is crumbling and his domestic policy needs serious housekeeping. His defense of the past six years in office is a cornucopia of platitudes generally delivered from the golf course or basketball court.

 

 

He is soon to be off on a three week holiday at Martha's Vineyard where the Obamas will be living in a palatial residence fit for billionaires and above. While most Americans don't disdain his wealth, they heavily castigate the manner in which he makes use of government funds and services to enhance his lifestyle. Whatever popularity he enjoys is largely from his super cool image typical of individuals who have nothing more to offer the world than a personality disorder.

 

Mitt Romney is making sounds to the effect that he will make another attempt to contest the presidency. This is after he, and more emphatically his wife, proclaimed that he would never run again for this office. To my mind he remains unelectable even though he is leading the polls of republican hopefuls by a wide margin.

 

 

Chris Christie, the Governor of New Jersey, is a distant second.

 

 

And would you believe, running last is a new name of the roster, Jeb Bush. Critics claim that Jeb's run will be futile owing to a massive case of Bush fatigue in America. His supporters claim he is far and away the best Bush yet. Also, being wed to an Hispanic woman brings substantial Hispanic support to the table.

 

 

This is something that has been sorely missing among republican contenders and indeed among republicans in general. They just can't seem to bring themselves around to courting anyone of colour.

 

 

Translated into political terms, the republicans are facing an uphill battle to overcome overwhelming demographic odds. In the last election, they lost the black and Hispanic vote,  American youths, liberals and far to many women.

 

 

We have another grueling two years of campaigning ahead of us before we can begin again with the 2020 election.

 

Foreign aid: 'beating the drum'.............

Wopusa adayimba ng’oma, ochenjera anabvina’

 

‘One who is foolish beat a drum while those who are clever danced’: Chichewa proverb.

 

Cameron recently declared that foreign aid has been his proudest achievement. Now a Lib-dem MP is introducing a Bill for the budget to be ring-fenced by law at 0.07% of GNI. That’s our earnings. At a time when key Departments like Education are getting cut, the aid budget has been increased to £12.6 billion from £8.4 billion since this Government came into office. That’s nigh on 50% in four years. Some austerity! This year it has increased by 28%. Meanwhile Britain has the smallest army since the 18^th Century and the smallest navy since Henry VIII; it has been dangerously weakened as a result, and the NHS is facing a major funding crisis.

 

Where does all this money go?

 

Well, name a ‘developing’ country and it’s on the list of beneficiaries, be it never so corrupt, incompetent, or a terrorist haven. A kleptocracy where the ruling elite steal everything not nailed down and much that is? Help yourself to some more from HMG. The former President of Malawi spent his aid money on an executive jet and a fleet of Mercs for his cronies, and there are endless similar examples. In another place, aid money to buy ambulances was spent on SUVs for the big-shots…………and so and so on!

 

Leading with the begging bowls are Nigeria, an immensely wealthy oil state renowned for its endless looting of the national treasury,  Pakistan (the money would help it to finance its nuclear weapons programme and it massive defence budget, instead of taxes which nobody pays anyway), India (one of the BRICS and another nuclear weapons owner), Afghanistan (say no more), Ethiopia with a particularly oppressive and unpleasant regime, Sudan where the President has an ICJ warrant out for him, Zimbabwe, and so on ad nauseam. Pick any nasty, corrupt, failed state run by a brutal dictator and British money is going there.

 

So here is the £50 billion question. Does it actually do any good?

 

The answer is that it does much more harm.

 

It is good for the rapacious consultancy firms that specialise in ‘good governance’ particularly. I have scrutinised  Financial Proposals on behalf of the beneficiary. It is not uncommon to charge out their specialists at $1200 dollars a day while paying $400 a day. A good mark-up, then. They play games with air-fares, daily subsistence allowances and ‘lump sum’ items that require no supporting documents. There are undoubtedly projects that have delivered the goods, mostly those involving fixed and visible capital assets like roads. But they are the exception.

 

Apart from theft, fraud and all the other malfeasance, whether money is spent wisely and usefully is questionable.

 

Example: Monserrat is a tiny Caribbean island half of which is uninhabitable due to a series of volcanic eruptions. Its current population is about 4500. The capital city now lies under volcanic ash; almost nothing is visible. The main  port and the airport were completely destroyed. A new airport was built with UK aid funds at a cost of $18.5 million. The locals protested vehemently that it was in the wrong place, but DFID knew better. The runway ends abruptly at a cliff edge. Millions have been spent on  ‘good governance’ programmes for a community the size of a small parish council.

 

Cash grants for resettlement might have been a better solution.

 

The basic fault with aid is that it creates dependency. My Malawian  counterpart reckoned that it was the worst thing that had happened to Africa; without it Africans would have had to stand on their own two feet. He described it as colonialism in a different guise, not far from reality when the donors  contribute  a large proportion of the budget that they can dictate to the beneficiary government – and do.

 

Most importantly, it severs the tie between politician and voter/taxpayer. When aid replaces tax revenues, the need for public accountability is minimalized, and this opens the door for politicians to plunder the Treasury safe in the knowledge that the public will not much care; it is not their money. Corruption becomes the norm.

 

In the UK the simple fact is that such generosity is unaffordable.

 

No wonder we have a shiny new aircraft carrier without any planes. It’s a mad world, my masters!

Rolf Harris: 'We are all guilty........!

 ‘White male over 60? Then you are likely to be a criminal’. This is the clear implication of R. vs. Harris.

 

There has been scant information of what he actually did. Perhaps the hacks were spending all their time covering the trials of Andy Coulson and the woman with hair like an explosion in a mattress factory. Just what did Rolf do with his didgeridoo? We gather that he was a serial groper.

 

Back in the long-gone era before the Pill, sex, drugs ‘n rock and roll, groping was part of a young man’s rite of passage. It was called ‘heavy petting’ by the Agony Aunts; not by us, though; we were the Wandering Hands Gang. It was the closest that a lad got to the real deal until he went into an unwisely early marriage out of sheer frustration.

 

One witness said that he touched her on the breast. Outrageous! Another on the bottom. Disgusting! He is alleged to have twanged a girl’s knicker elastic. Presumably this was around her waist, unless she was wearing the knee-length wrist-breakers of old. We would go for the bra strap in preference. He put his hand up the back of a girl’s leg, for which she was paid £33,000 by the meeja in Oz when she recently sold the story. We favoured the front of the leg until restrained about 6 inches into the journey.

 

Needless to say, some of the victims are hungrily eyeing Harris’ £11 million stash and seeking compensation. This could raise some interesting questions.  What loss or injury  did the plaintiff suffer? What is the quantum of damages?

 

Cui bono? Well we know the answer to that. Primarily the lawyers who have had their snouts deep into a particularly generous trough. Plus the media that has been able to salivate over the ruination of an elderly icon, and the publicity-hungry Crown  Prosecution Service that desperately needed a success after a series of humiliating failures. The losers are us, who will for an enormously expensive investigation and trial as the price for the Establishment cover-ups over Savile.

 

So when 18 cops smash down your front door at 4 a.m. and nick you before you can scarper on your Zimmerframe you will know that you are bang-to-rights.

 

We are all guilty!

 

Postscript: there’s a much better scandal on the way. Grub Street as got hold of a story about a missing dossier detailing kiddy-fiddling by senior politicians in the 1980’s. This will run and run.